Conversation With A Dalek
by Gaming Ikari
Summary: Just how did the Eleventh Doctor get by the Dalek in the Big Bang? He certainly wasn't in any condition to run or hide from it.


Conversation with a Dalek

oOo

"Spoilers."

This takes place during during the first Series starring Matt Smith, during a certain the twelve-minute span in the episode The Big Bang. If you've not yet seen it, I suggest that you stop reading now.

oOo

Even underpowered, I could safely come to the conclusion that a Dalek blast to the upper torso was not something that any man would want to endure. I'd collapsed to my knees and fell onto my back, but in that time I knew I had to trust myself. I keyed in the temporal coordinates in the vortex manipulator, adding in the ninety degree twist just for effect.

I was already limp when the time change hit me. The stairs did nothing to help my overall health. In fact, I blacked out when the right side of my head skimmed across a stair, and only the fact I knew I would wake up prevented me from thinking that this series of events was a bad idea.

Time travel can hurt _my_ brain, and I'm... well, me.

Twelve minutes earlier, my younger counterpart in his glorious fez knelt near me. With some of the dregs of energy I had, I leaned up and spoke.

"Tell them I'm dead. You've got twelve minutes," I whispered, then allowed myself to collapse. I didn't move when my slightly younger self stood and informed Amy and Rory that we'd need to move, nor did I flinch when the Nestene duplicate of Rory draped his coat over me.

They ran off, and I allowed them to do so. River could take care of them, once I rescued her from the heart of the TARDIS. I weakly shoved the coat off of me and pushed myself upright, my legs sprawled down the stairs. I'd barely caught my breath before I saw the shape of one of my most hated foes glide around the corner.

"THE DOCTOR IS WEAKENED!" My god, they always sound so surprised when they say anything. Setting aside the genocide, that's probably the thing I found most annoying about them. Cybermen made statements like fact, but Daleks _always_ sounded so surprised.

"Scan me," I said, grinning slightly. The monster's eyestalk took me in, before it spoke again.

"THE DOCTOR HAS BEEN STRUCK DOWN BY A DALEK ALREADY!" The creature stated, surprised. It advanced a bit towards me, the blaster training on me. "I WILL FINISH!"

"Go ahead. I need the head start," I dared it. As always, as with any time I present a Dalek with a contradiction, it froze.

"EXPLAIN!"

Of course.

"You've already hit me. About eleven minutes from now, you catch up to me. You hit me and nearly kill me. And so here we are, Dalek," I explained, grinning a bit as I fought my way to my feet. I stumble down the stairs and catch myself at the bottom, the eye stalk trailing back up to glare at me. "You've already tried to kill me and failed."

"TIME CAN BE REWRITTEN! THE DOCTOR CAN BE KILLED NOW AND AGAIN IN TEN MINUTES, TWELVE SECONDS!" The Dalek declared, body rotating to train the weapon on me once more.

"We both know that time can be rewritten," I countered, grinning as I patted the dome of its head, like a child. "I know that right now, even if you fire not a single shot until you've done this to me, your best isn't enough to kill me or my friends. I know that you're going to go and try to kill me, because you're more scared of what I'll do if you waste your energy on me now than what I'll do if you do shoot me in nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds and leave me to stumble towards whatever plan I've got."

"YOU ARE ALMOST DEAD!" The Dalek yelled, moving towards me an inch. I leaned forward to look it in the eye stalk.

"And don't I just scare you to pieces for it?" I replied, winking. I took a step, then patted it on the area one might call the back. "Go on, then. Go on and kill me. I've got enough to do without wasting my time with you. Better hurry up, though," I finish, casually glancing at the watch on my wrist.

"If you keep on dallying, I might just get away entirely."

Awkwardly, using the propulsion system encased in it's lowest portions, the Dalek levitated up the stairs and went after Amy, Rory, and myself. It didn't know that River would be with us, and that more than anything allowed me to goad it the way I had. Those two would be safe in her hands, no matter what.

It's a good thing that the Dalek hadn't been chattier, I reflected as my motor functions gave out almost completely halfway down the hallway to the Pandorica. I might not have made it into the restoration field if I'd had to chat it up more.

The vortex manipulator wouldn't tie itself into that prison.

oOo

Author's Notes:

Short, I know, but it fills a piece of the puzzle that bothered me.

Daleks are all about percentages and odds. The Doctor knows this. So even in a situation where the Dalek knows it's doomed to failure (killing the Doctor in the 'present' as opposed to the 'future' Doctor) it knows that the best odds it has are to play into his hand and try. It's doomed to failure and it knows it, but it'd prefer to fail to an almost-even chance rather than handing the Doctor the win.

Or at least, that's how I envision things.


End file.
